“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was announced at Comic-Con in 2013, and now almost three years later this movie is finally here, unleashed upon the masses, a mash up of two of the most popular comic book characters ever in a very expensive production, long and loud and stuffed to the gills with ideas. There’s a big potential for being letdown with something this big that takes so long to come out, with so much anticipation and expectation foisted upon it, so maybe it was inevitable that it would not live up to what it could have been, but did anyone expect this?
Because if you looked at the critical community at large, this movie is not getting good reviews, and as a matter of fact, is getting some of the worst reviews for a comic book movie. And many of these reviews have complaints that are very well founded and make sense, but is it also because everyone is watching this movie a little closer and with more scrutiny due to the very nature of the movie itself? People all around the world know who these two characters are just by looking at them, they are ingrained in modern American mythology, these characters (and others like them) are the 20th and 21st Century versions of the Norse, Greek and Roman gods (and sometimes they use actual gods), and we want, even subconsciously, for our $250 million tent pole commercially-driven paean to these characters to be worthy of the time and effort. And it seems a good portion of people believe this not to be the case with “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but is it the total wash that many make it out to be?